ViewGuide

Created Jul 29, 2011 10:03PM PST • Edited Jun 27, 2016 11:02PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

   The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, OTOH, does need to be viewed by every serious movie fan. By turns funny, challenging and intriguing, it deserves its status as one of the greatest movies of all time. Humphrey Bogart’s scurrilous Fred C. Dobbs is also rightly lauded as one of Bogie’s greatest performances. In a career that includes Casablanca’s Rick Blaine and The Maltese Falcon’s Sam Spade, that’s saying something.

   The story is deceptively simple. Two down-and-out Americans eking out an existence in 1920s Mexico throw in with an old prospector. This becomes an epic case of be careful what you wish for when they make a major gold find. Sudden wealth brings out the essence of each man, which isn’t pretty in the case of Fred C. Dobbs.

   Three Oscars followed, for Walter Huston’s wily prospector, and for his son John’s writing and directing. Amazingly, Bogie wasn’t even nominated. Fred C. Dobbs wouldn’t of taken that lying down, I’ll tell you that!

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   Humphrey Bogart has every twitch, squint, and avaricious grin down to perfection. His Fred C. Dobbs is one of the inimitable anti-heroes in movie history. Ain’t too proud to beg doesn’t even begin to characterize this sad excuse for a man. Bogie’s essay of his downfall is cinematic brilliance. Talk about the courage to not need the audience’s love!

   Walter Huston’s old prospector matches Bogie in bravura acting. Huston won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role. Shoulda given him two.

   Tim Holt is less impressive than his fellow prospectors. But then, who could fully hang with Bogie and Huston in their greatest roles?

   Bruce Bennett is touching as the desperate interloper who tries to join the prospecting venture.

   And let’s hear it for Alfonso Bedoya, utterer of the “no stinkin’ badges” line. Immortal.

   Finally, look for the white-suited American who Bogie hits up time and again in the beginning of the movie. None other than John Huston, the movie’s director, Walter’s son and Anjelica’s father. Legendary.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

   None, but set to match male stars so as not to skew the rating.

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

   None, but set to match male stars so as not to skew the rating.

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    John Huston scripted & directed The Treasure of the Sierra Madre seven years after The Maltese Falcon and three years before The African Queen. This golden decade forms the core of his legendary career.

    His film brilliantly shows the calculations that people make in looking after their self-interest, even if that self-interest is to help out their fellow man. It also shows the existence of evil, sometimes overt evil (as with the desperadoes) and sometimes covert evil (as with the increasingly soul-sick Fred C. Dobbs).

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Perfect 5.0

    OK, so Gold Hat didn’t exactly say Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges! He actually said “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”

    Huston’s well conceived screenplay (from B. Traven’s novel) is full of such great lines, including several when Fred C. Dobbs refers to himself, always including the C. “Any more lip out of you and I’ll haul off and let you have it. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t monkey around with Fred C. Dobbs.” Got that!

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Impressive visuals for a 1940s movie. Much of it was shot on location in Mexico, one of the first movies where that was done.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.0

    A little saltiness and old fashioned violence goes a long way in a classic movie like this.

17. Sex Innocent 1.4

18. Violence Fierce 2.1

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.9

    The machinations between the prospectors nicely illustrate game theory, where each participant has to plot his own actions based on how he perceives the others and his judgement of outside threats. Intriguing.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.3

23. Biological Glib 2.0

24. Physical Glib 1.5